DOE PAGES title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Engineering a Full Gamut of Structural Colors in All-Dielectric Mesoporous Network Metamaterials

Journal Article · · ACS Photonics
 [1];  [2]; ORCiD logo [1];  [2];  [2]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3]
  1. Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid (Spain). Inst. de Micro y Nanotecnología
  2. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States). Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
  3. Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid (Spain). Inst. de Micro y Nanotecnología; Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States). Dept. of Mechanical Engineering

Structural colors are a result of the scattering of certain frequencies of the incident light on micro- or nanoscale features in a material. This is a quite different phenomenon from that of colors produced by absorption of different frequencies of the visible spectrum by pigments or dyes, which is the most common way of coloring used in our daily life. However, structural colors are more robust and can be engineered to span most of the visible spectrum without changing the base material, only its internal structure. They are abundant in nature, with examples as colorful as beetle shells and butterfly wings, but there are few ways of preparing them for large-scale commercial applications for real-world uses. In this work, we present a technique to create a full gamut of structural colors based on a low-cost, robust, and scalable fabrication of periodic network structures in porous alumina as well as the strategy to theoretically predict and engineer different colors on demand. We experimentally demonstrate mesoporous network metamaterial structures with engineered colors spanning the whole optical spectrum and discuss their applications in sensing, environmental monitoring, biomimetic tissues engineering, etc.

Research Organization:
Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC) (United States). Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center (S3TEC)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0001299; FG02-09ER46577
OSTI ID:
1470618
Journal Information:
ACS Photonics, Vol. 5, Issue 6; Related Information: S3TEC partners with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (lead); Boston College; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; ISSN 2330-4022
Publisher:
American Chemical Society (ACS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 36 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (55)

Structural Colors in Insects. III journal December 1927
Colour without colourants journal April 2011
Unparalleled sensitivity of photonic structures in butterfly wings journal January 2014
Spatially modulated structural colour in bird feathers journal December 2015
Colour mixing in wing scales of a butterfly journal March 2000
Quantified interference and diffraction in single Morpho butterfly scales journal July 1999
Ultrastructural basis and function of iridescent blue colour of fruits inElaeocarpus journal January 1991
Opal analogue discovered in a weevil journal December 2003
Morpho butterfly wing scales demonstrate highly selective vapour response journal February 2007
Fabrication of Sensor Materials Inspired by Butterfly Wings journal March 2017
Infrared Detection Based on Localized Modification of Morpho Butterfly Wings journal December 2014
Sustainable sensors from silk journal January 2013
Structural colour in colourimetric sensors and indicators journal January 2013
Active Antifogging Property of Monolayer SiO 2 Film with Bioinspired Multiscale Hierarchical Pagoda Structures journal July 2016
Three-Dimensional Nanostructures for Photonics journal March 2010
Bio-Inspired Band-Gap Tunable Elastic Optical Multilayer Fibers journal January 2013
Optics on the Go journal January 2017
Color-changing and color-tunable photonic bandgap fiber textiles journal January 2008
Fabrication of photonic crystals for the visible spectrum by holographic lithography journal March 2000
Scalable focused ion beam creation of nearly lifetime-limited single quantum emitters in diamond nanostructures journal May 2017
Formation of colorimetric fingerprints on nano-patterned deterministic aperiodic surfaces journal January 2010
Spectral analysis of induced color change on periodically nanopatterned silk films journal January 2009
Spatial and spectral detection of protein monolayers with deterministic aperiodic arrays of metal nanoparticles journal June 2010
Large-area, uniform and low-cost dual-mode plasmonic naked-eye colorimetry and SERS sensor with handheld Raman spectrometer journal January 2016
Fano Resonant Aluminum Nanoclusters for Plasmonic Colorimetric Sensing journal October 2015
Colorimetric resonant reflection as a direct biochemical assay technique journal January 2002
Scalable, ultra-resistant structural colors based on network metamaterials journal September 2016
Self-Assembled Photonic Structures journal September 2010
Mimicking the colourful wing scale structure of the Papilio blumei butterfly journal May 2010
Tunable Mesoporous Bragg Reflectors Based on Block-Copolymer Self-Assembly journal July 2011
Application of Bottlebrush Block Copolymers as Photonic Crystals journal May 2017
Flexible, Angle-Independent, Structural Color Reflectors Inspired by Morpho Butterfly Wings journal April 2012
Structural color printing based on plasmonic metasurfaces of perfect light absorption journal June 2015
Polarization independent visible color filter comprising an aluminum film with surface-plasmon enhanced transmission through a subwavelength array of holes journal February 2011
Dynamic plasmonic colour display journal February 2017
Structural Color Filters Enabled by a Dielectric Metasurface Incorporating Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon Nanodisks journal May 2017
Aluminum Plasmonics Based Highly Transmissive Polarization-Independent Subtractive Color Filters Exploiting a Nanopatch Array journal October 2014
Tuning color by pore depth of metal-coated porous alumina journal July 2011
Brilliant and tunable color of carbon-coated thin anodic aluminum oxide films journal July 2007
Color Fine-Tuning of CNTs@AAO Composite Thin Films via Isotropically Etching Porous AAO Before CNT Growth and Color Modification by Water Infusion journal May 2010
Modulation of Transmission Spectra of Anodized Alumina Membrane Distributed Bragg Reflector by Controlling Anodization Temperature journal March 2009
Optical transmission spectra of ordered porous alumina membranes with different thicknesses and porosities journal July 2006
Nanoporous Anodic Alumina Rugate Filters for Sensing of Ionic Mercury: Toward Environmental Point-of-Analysis Systems journal July 2014
Structural Engineering of Nanoporous Anodic Alumina Photonic Crystals by Sawtooth-like Pulse Anodization journal May 2016
Ordered three-dimensional interconnected nanoarchitectures in anodic porous alumina journal October 2014
Tailoring thermal conductivity via three-dimensional porous alumina journal December 2016
Inhibited Spontaneous Emission in Solid-State Physics and Electronics journal May 1987
Strong localization of photons in certain disordered dielectric superlattices journal June 1987
The C.I.E. colorimetric standards and their use journal January 1931
A Pigment Color System and Notation journal April 1912
Inkjet Printing Based Mono-layered Photonic Crystal Patterning for Anti-counterfeiting Structural Colors journal August 2016
Lithographically Encrypted Inverse Opals for Anti-Counterfeiting Applications journal June 2016
Silk-Based Conformal, Adhesive, Edible Food Sensors journal January 2012
Toward a High-Efficient Utilization of Solar Radiation by Quad-Band Solar Spectral Splitting journal October 2016
Topological Engineering of Interfacial Optical Tamm States for Highly Sensitive Near-Singular-Phase Optical Detection journal December 2017

Cited By (6)

Nanoporous Anodic Alumina Photonic Crystals for Optical Chemo- and Biosensing: Fundamentals, Advances, and Perspectives journal October 2018
Structural color printing with a dielectric layer coated on a nanotextured metal substrate: simulation and experiment journal January 2019
Tailoring Magnetic Anisotropy at Will in 3D Interconnected Nanowire Networks journal July 2019
Active control of plasmonic colors: emerging display technologies journal January 2019
Biomimetic photonics journal January 2019
Nanoporous Anodic Alumina Photonic Crystals for Optical Chemo- and Biosensing: Fundamentals, Advances, and Perspectives journal October 2018